


Dishonor On Your Chat

by AlexSeanchai (EllieMurasaki)



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Adrien Agreste Needs a Hug, Autistic Adrien Agreste, Autistic Marinette Dupain-Cheng, F/M, Identity Reveal, Marinette Dupain-Cheng | Ladybug Has Anxiety, Puns & Word Play, more violence than canon-typical but less than warrants the archive warning
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-21
Updated: 2018-10-21
Packaged: 2019-08-05 14:37:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,039
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16369469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EllieMurasaki/pseuds/AlexSeanchai
Summary: He might have watched a little much Disney.She might be one lucky bug.





	Dishonor On Your Chat

"Xiūrù!" Chat Noir shouted at Thousand Cuts. "Zài nǐ quánjiā de chǐrǔ!" He leaped backward to dodge a blizzard of yuan notes. "Make a note of this, Crikee!" he called up to Ladybug.

Ladybug allowed herself one brief eyeroll. All that joss paper had to be coming from _something_ the akuma was carrying, if she could only _spot_ it—

"Zài nǐ shēnshang xiūrù!" Her partner vaulted up with his baton—not fast enough— "Nǐ niú de chǐrǔ!" Bleeding shins didn't shut him up, apparently—but—

 _You know that's hit an artery,_ whispered the back of her head. And it wasn't that bad, it _wasn't_ —

But—

"Lucky Charm!"

Ladybug caught the polkadot teacup in one hand and frowned at it.

Chat Noir thumped down ungracefully beside her. "'Would you like a spot of tea, sir?'" he quoted in English, intonation note-perfect, accent not. "'It'll warm you up in no time.'"

She glared at him. "You're _bleeding_ —" Running footsteps behind her; she whipped around, whirling her yo-yo as a shield—

Nino leaped back, hands up in surrender. "Whoa, dudes! Let me help!"

Ladybug retracted her yo-yo and glanced down at the teacup. "Right," she muttered. "Do you know any first aid?"

"French Red Cross training." Nino looked Chat over. "Those claws sharp?"

* * *

Ladybug tore the red envelope in two, caught the purple butterfly and released the white one, and pitched the polkadot cosmetics compact into the air, crying out "Miraculous Ladybug!"

Carapace, unencumbered, beat her to Chat Noir's side. Chat was sitting up, rubbing at his right leg, where the strips torn from Nino's shirt weren't anymore; Carapace offered him a hand to his feet.

Chat waggled his eyebrows at Ladybug, dusting himself off. "All this blood and I'm still not your type?"

Ladybug folded her arms so she wouldn't throw them around him. "Your deflections are in vein."

"I'm an optimist," Chat retorted. "Says so on my medical records. B positive."

"Awful lot of _B positive_ outside of you a minute ago!"

Carapace took a step back. "Iiii think I should go."

Ladybug flicked him a glance. "Wait for me."

"Seriously?" Chat demanded as Carapace dashed away. "You're leaving with _him_?"

She reached up and grabbed Chat's left cat ear. "Strictly business, I promise," she bit out. "He doesn't get to keep his Miraculous the clock round, remember?"

Chat snorted. "And that makes me feel _so_ much better about not knowing who he is."

Ladybug resisted the temptation to yank on his offending ear. "I _can't tell you_."

"What if you're out of commission and I need backup?" Chat twisted out of her grasp, glaring at her. "I don't know where to find Carapace _or_ Rena!"

—Good point. This ladybug wasn't always a lucky one. But. "I'm sorry I feel like my honor's worth defending!"

"I'm sorry I feel our lives are worth more than our honor!"

"I'm sorry I feel my life's not worth much without honor!"

Out-of-sync beeps.

Ladybug swore. "The baker girl's balcony, sunset," she told him, and waited half a second for his sharp nod before tearing after Carapace.

* * *

Twilight was only just falling when Chat Noir landed on the roof across the street from Marinette's balcony. Ladybug looked up from her sketchbook, closed it, and swung across to join him.

"Sorry I shouted at you," Chat said, cat ears drooped and attention on the tail-tip he was twirling in one hand.

"Sorry I shouted first," Ladybug told him, moving to lean on the railing, her hand barely its own width away from his unoccupied one. "I was _scared_ , Chat. One of these days you'll run out of lives."

Chat glanced up at her and smirked. "I have faith in you."

 _Nothing here to have faith in,_ whispered the back of her head.

"And," Ladybug continued, determined, "I'm sorry I made you feel I don't trust you."

He snorted and looked away. _Fwip, fwip, fwip,_ said the tip of his tail.

"And I'm sorry I can't tell you the truth."

_Fwip, fwip, fwip._

"It really _isn't_ that I don't trust you. This isn't _about_ you and me. It isn't about you at all."

_Fwip, fwip, fwip._

"It's about _me_ , Chat. Whether _I'm_ trustworthy. _My_ honor. Don't you see?" Ladybug asked, suddenly nervous that he really _wouldn't_ understand. "You have this pretty picture in your head labeled 'Ladybug', and one of the things about that picture is she's _honorable_."

Chat's claws bit into the balcony railing, even as his tail-tip continued its _fwip, fwip_.

"I _can't_ tell you secrets that aren't mine to tell," Ladybug plowed on. "I can't act with dishonor. I can't let you down."

The tail-tip fwipped to a stop.

"I could never be disappointed in you," Chat told her, quiet and firm. " _Never_ , Bug."

"I doubt that," muttered Ladybug, whose stress dreams regularly included Chat finding her out and scorning both her faces accordingly.

—Wait.

(This was a bad idea, she knew. This was going to end horribly. This was going to crash and burn _entirely_ as spectacularly as stealing Adrien's phone had the day of the Copycat incident.)

(She didn't care.)

"I can't tell you secrets that aren't mine to tell," Ladybug repeated. "But I can tell you secrets that are _only_ mine to tell."

Chat's head snapped around: wide-eyed and slack-jawed. He caught himself at once, plastering a neutrally interested expression on his face, but she'd seen.

"There's a poem," she told him. "'Risk', by Anaïs Nin. One of my favorites:

" _And then the day came_  
_when the risk_  
_to remain tight_  
_in a bud—_ "

" _—was more painful—_ " Chat's voice joined hers:

" _than the risk_  
_it took_  
_to Blossom._ "

Ladybug cleared her abruptly dry throat. "You know it," she said.

Chat snorted, looking up and away. "I had expensive tutors."

"Is it Walt Disney's birthday and no one told me?" She shook her head. "Never mind. Look at me, Chat."

He turned to face her.

Ladybug swallowed. "Spots off."

Chat's eyes bugged out. "What—"

"I know you flirt with a thousand girls," Marinette told him, without looking at her purse as she extracted Tikki's emergency cookies. "So I know you don't remember me."

"I _what_ now?" Chat squawked.

Tikki grabbed a cookie and rose to hover at Chat's eye level, studying Marinette's face in silence as she inhaled the treat.

Marinette smiled at Chat. "Come find me."

"Come— _what_?"

"Tikki, spots on!"

* * *

Marinette dragged herself into lycée the next morning with great reluctance. Early, even. Thoughts of Chat finding her, only to take a good solid look at Marinette Dupain-Cheng (walking disaster) and abandon her altogether, had kept her up all night.

"Hey, Marinette!" called Nino. "Mari _nette_!"

She glanced up. And up. And up.

"…Is there an Eiffel Tower made of toothpicks on my desk?"

"Looks like it, dude," Nino said cheerily.

"…Why is there an Eiffel Tower made of toothpicks on my desk?"

"There's a note," Alya added helpfully, turning Marinette's chin to point her gaze at the slim roll of paper stuck between toothpick beams—at exactly the spot on the human-height toothpick tower where Ladybug would expect to find Chat Noir, were she to suggest he meet her at the landmark.

Well, that wasn't suspicious at all.

Marinette reached up and took the paper; unrolled it; stared at the ten-point Arial.

"'Always give one hundred percent,'" she read out. "'Unless you're donating blood.'"

"…really," said Alya, unimpressed, and grabbed Marinette's wrist to check both sides of the paper.

Adrien snickered. "I got a B+ on my blood test," he told them. "Failure runs in my veins."

Marinette looked over, just to make sure. No, that was definitely Adrien, though he was doing his best imitation of Chat Noir's smirk. "You know how a mosquito's like your father?"

Adrien smirked wider. "Tell me."

"He's a pain in your neck, but he carries your blood."

"Direct hit!" Adrien said, laughing. "Hey, what would you get if you crossed a teacher with a vampire?"

Marinette rolled her eyes. "Lots of blood tests?"

Adrien leaned over to Nino and stage whispered, "It's like she knows me."

Marinette yawned. "There is too much blood in my caffeine system for this," she told them all. "Help me get this thing out of the way before class starts?"

* * *

"Where did this even _come_ from?"

Marinette didn't look at her mother. "A not-so-secret admirer."

"Ooo _ooo_ oooh," said Alya and Nino in unison, and Alya continued with interrogatively narrowed eyes, "Who?"

"I'm not telling." Marinette shifted her grip on the cardboard they were using to hold the toothpick tower. "It's not your business anyway."

"Not even one little hint?" wheedled Adrien, shuffling bit by bit with the other three towards the bakery delivery van.

Marinette rolled her eyes. "Has anyone ever told you you're an optimist?"

"Says so on my blood test," Adrien said, grinning. "B positive."

Her knees gave out. The toothpick tower toppled.

"Marinette?" asked Maman, and "Marinette!" yelped Alya.

"It's okay! I'm fine!" exclaimed Marinette. "I'm fine!" She looked around at the profusion of toothpicks. "I don't think this thing was meant to last long anyway."

"Yeah, if he'd meant it for keeps he'd have at _least_ used popsicle sticks," Adrien said, moving to gingerly pick up the mostly-intact base of the tower. It came apart at his touch.

Alya narrowed her eyes at him. "And how do you know this admirer's a he?"

Marinette ignored this, beginning to scoop up toothpicks. "All this blood," she said softly, without looking at Adrien, "and I'm still not your type?"

"Iiii think we should go," said Nino, and grabbed Alya's hand and bolted.

" _Nino_!"

"Alya, our ship is sailing! We're not—" A door thudded shut behind them.

"Marinette?" asked Maman.

She didn't look. She wasn't looking. She wasn't going to look.

Two jean-clad knees appeared in the corner of her vision. "I could never," Adrien said earnestly, "be disappointed in you."

 _Lies, lies, lies!_ shrilled the back of her head.

And it _could_ all be coincidence. Still. Somehow. But Maman still stood _right there_ —

"Dishonor," she said.

"Huh?"

"Dishonor on your whole family."

Adrien sputtered.

Marinette dared to glance at him, just a little. "Dishonor on you," she said, and was that the beginning of his smile? "Dishonor on your cow—"

And _there_. She'd know Chat Noir's flirtatious smirk anywhere. "I feel like something's bugging you, Princess!" He waggled his eyebrows. "Spotted it yet?"

"You've got to be kitten me."

Adrien's eyes lit up. "Cat got your tongue?"

"I don't know," Marinette fired back, "was that an invitation?"

He froze, wide-eyed and slack-jawed. Caught himself, with a twitch towards Marinette's Maman—

Oh. _Oh_. Uh-oh.

Marinette breathed out. Breathed in. And quietly, she said, "Let's get this cleaned up."

* * *

That evening, a tapping sounded at Marinette's skylight. She looked up, then hurried to open it. "I'm not imagining it, am I?" she asked Chat. "You're—who I think you are?"

Chat shrugged. "Always have been." He pulled his other hand out from behind his back. "My lovely lady."

Marinette stared at the dozen red roses. Swallowed hard, and said, "Why don't you go switch back and bring those in the front way?"

"You sure?"

"Yeah." She made shooing motions, and a moment later latched the skylight behind him.

 _All a trick!_ whispered the back of her head. _All a lie—_

But when Marinette got downstairs, there stood Adrien Agreste, wearing a white Gabriel suit and holding a dozen red roses.

 _A prank,_ whispered the back of her head, _just look for the hidden cameras—_

Adrien rubbed at the back of his neck. "Guess the cat's out of the bag."

"Guess so," Marinette agreed. "So, uh." She rubbed damp palms on her skirt. " _Was_ that an invitation?"

He met her eyes, and _how_ had she missed for so long that this steady green gaze was the _same_ on both sides of the mask?

"Did you want it to be?"

Marinette snickered. "Silly kitty," she said, and closed the space between them before his face could fall too far. "Ask me again."

Adrien gulped, and smiled. "Cat got your tongue?"

She wrapped her arms around his neck, feeling him embrace her, hearing the roses' paper wrapping crinkle by her ear, and drew his head down to hers.

**Author's Note:**

> Disney movies quoted: _Mulan_ (in both English and Google Translate Chinese) and _Beauty and the Beast_ (in both animated and live-action)
> 
> Blood puns googled: LOTS
> 
> Find me on [Dreamwidth](https://alexseanchai.dreamwidth.org/) and [Tumblr](http://alexseanchai.tumblr.com/).


End file.
